MPlayer problems

[Derick Centeno]

Hi Paul:
When something like this happens with any program, uninstalling it with 
yum might be a good idea.  But before you uninstall why not find where 
it is now first?

You can do this with the more common commands, using the find command 
to find anything with mplayer might be a good idea.
# find / -name "mpl*" -print > findmplayer
Trick: initiate this command not just as superuser but from your root 
directory.
The above tells find to search for anything with mpl and any listing 
following the l and print it into a file called findmplayer.  It is 
unlikely that unrelated files could be picked up this way but that is 
possible with this method; the neat side is that this method will pick 
up smaller files that mplayer may use and signify as mpl.

You could also use something mindbogglingly simple, like whereis.
$ whereis mplayer
This just lists where the executable is, but it is a start.

It is always a good idea to learn where a program you installed is 
placed first, before you decide to get rid of it.  Otherwise, you will 
never be sure you are rid of it.
Regarding whatever went wrong with yum, remember that it is just a 
program like any other.  Meaning that just because something appears to 
work doesn't mean it does what the designer or user wants it to do.  
There is always the distinct interpretation of what the computer thinks 
the designer intended or must really mean instead!  Of course, really 
solid programming avoids the computer from making choices of 
interpretation for itself but programmers also are human.  Although 
some people think that is just hearsay.

If you go to mplayers site and get the source for it's most stable 
version.  You should be able to compile that with no problem.  That's 
what used to be the most reliable thing to do before yum or apt or 
apt-get and such came along.  So back to basics.  You could drop a note 
to the yum team and make them aware there may be a problem or you could 
insure that you have the most current version of yum.

By the way did you do:
#  yum update yum

???? How about doing that first before you search and remove mplayer 
... just to insure that yum is at it's supposed best.  Two responses 
are possible.  You have the latest version already.  In which case you 
write to the yum team that something is awry.  Or you get a message 
that demonstrates something is happening and the update proceeds.
Try installing mplayer with that newer version of yum.  It might 
actually work this time.

After all that you possibly may consider actually using xine (as I 
previously recommended) and as Norberto did.  You just may discover 
that it can do whatever mplayer does, just better.

Best wishes....

On Jan 18, 2006, at 11:38 PM, Paul Higgins (U of M) wrote:

> I found another MPlayer directory (in addition to the empty
> directory /etc/mplayer).  It's /usr/share/doc/mplayer-1.0, but it 
> seems to be
> all codecs and support files.  It isn't real clear where exactly the
> executable is, but it looks like maybe /usr/bin.
>
> It's really too bad that this is happening, as MPlayer for OS X is 
> really easy
> to get running.  I still don't know what went wrong with the yum 
> install of
> MPlayer, as it seemed to go OK at the time.
>
> Should I just remove MPlayer using yum and then compile it from 
> source?  I'm
> kind of at a loss here.
>
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